
Glass 1=. 

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LIFE AND PRINCIPLES 



ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 



Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX. 



jlifc and |rincifUs 



ABEAHAM LUSTCOLl^. 



Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX, 



Delivered in the Court House Square, at South Bend, April 2-i, 1865. 



"VN 



.^WXi OF co^ 






PHILADELPHIA: 

JAS. B. RODGERS, PRINTER, 52 t 54 NORTU SIXTH ST. 

1865. 



^45' 






[Mr. Colfax, by invitation of the Christian Commission, repeated this address 
at Bryan Hall, Chicago, on Sabbath, April 30th, to an audience which crowded 
the Hall an hour before the time of its delivery. As he said many things there 
extemporaneously, in addition to his manuscript which was printed in the Chi- 
cago Tribune, he has revised it, making these additions.] 



LIFE AND PRINCIPLES 



OF 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Over two centuries and a half have passed away since 
the ruler of any great Nation of the world has Mien by 
the murderous attack qf an assassin; and for the first time 
in our history there is blood on the Presidential chair of 
our Republic. Death is almost always saddening. The 
passing away of some dear friend from our earthly sight 
for ever, fills the heart with sorrow. When it strikes 
down one who fills honorably a position of influence and 
power, as in the case of our two Presidents who died of 
disease in the White House, the sincerest grief is felt 
throughout the land. But when this affliction is aggra- 
vated by death coming through the hand of a murderer, 
it is not strange that the wave of wo sweeps gloomily over 
a nation, which sits down to mourn in sackcloth, its pulses 
of business stilled, feeling in every individual heart as if 
there was one dead at our own hearth-stones. It seems, 
toO; as if this wicked deed were intensified, in all its horror, 

3 



4 LIFE AND rPJNCIPLES OF 

by every attendant circumstance. The fatal shot was fired 
on the very day when the Nation's flag was again unfurled 
in triumjih over that fort in Charleston harbor, which, in 
four years' time, had been the cradle and the grave of the 
rebellion. It was at an hour when the death of the Presi- 
dent could not be of the slightest avail to the treasonable 
conspiracy against the Republic, which its military leaders 
acknowledged at last was powerless and overthrown. And 
it was aimed, alas, with too sure a hand, at the life of that 
one man in the Govemmeni whose heart was tenderest 
towards the would-be assassins of the Nation's life. 

You may search history, ancient and modern, and when 
the task is ended, all will concede that Abraham Lincoln 
was the most merciful ruler who ever put down a powerful 
rebellion. He had so won the hearts of the people, and so 
entwined himself in their regard and affection, that he was 
the only man living who could have stood in the breach 
between the leaders of this iniquity and the wrath of the 
country they had plunged into bloody war. Feehng, as 
so many did, that his kindly heart almost forgot justice in 
its throbbings for mercy, yet, knowing his unfaltering de- 
votion to his country, his inflexible adherence to principle, 
his unyielding determination for the restoration of our na- 
tional unity, there was a trust in him, almost filial in its 
loving confidence, that whatever he should finally resolve 
on would prove in the end to be for the best. Had he 
been an unforgiving ruler; had his daily practice been to 
sit in his high place, and there administer with unrelent- 
ing severity the penalties of offended law; had he pro- 
claimed his resolution to consign all the plotters against 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 5 

his country to the gallows they had ea,rned, we might have 
understood why the reliel assassins conspired against his 
life. But no assassination in history — not even that of 
Henry IV., of France, for which* Ravaillac was torn in 
pieces hy horses, nor William of Orange — approximates in 
utter unpalliated infamy to this. 

In the midst of the national rejoicings over the assured 
triumph of the national cause, with illuminations and bon- 
fires blazing in everj'' town, and the merry peal of tlie 
festive bell in every village, our cities blossoming with 
flags, our hearts beating high with joy, the two great ar- 
mies of Grant and Lee fraternizing together after their long 
warfare, and exulting together over the return of peace, 
we were brought, in a single moment, from the utmost 
heights of felicity to the deepest valleys of lamentation. 
No wonder that rebel generals acknowledged that it sent 
down their cause, through all the coming centuries, to 
shameless dishonor. For, disguise it, as some may seek to 
do, behind the form of the assassin, as his finger pulled the 
fatal trigger, looms up the dark and fiendish spirit of the 
rebellion; which, baffled in its work of assassinating the 
nation's life, avenged itself on the life of him who repre- 
sented the nation's contest and the nation's victory. As 
surely as the infamous offer of twenty-five thousand crowns 
by Philip of Spain to whomsoever would rid the world of 
the pious AVilliam of Orange, the purest and best-loved 
ruler of his times, who, by a striking coincidence, was called 
Father William, as we called our beloved President Father 
Abraham — as surely as this public offer, with its false de- 
nunciations of William's offences, inspirited the murderous 



6 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

Balthazar to shoot him through the body — so surely are 
the chiefs of this gigantic rebellion of our times responsible 
for the fatal bullet that carried death to our Chief Magis- 
trate, and filled the land with unavailing sorrow. 

Unrebuked by them, history repeated itself in the fol- 
lowing infamous proffer, published in the Selma, Alabama, 
Dispatch of last December, and copied approvingly into 
other rebel organs: 

"One Million Dollars Wanted, to Have Peace by the 1st of. 
March. — If the citizens of the Southern Confederacy will furnish me 
with the cash, or good securities for the sum of one million dollars, I will 
cause the lives of Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, and Andrew 
Johnson to be taken by the first of March next. This will give us peace, 
and satisfy the world that cruel tyrants cannot live in a 'land of liberty.' 
If this be not accomplished, nothing will be claimed beyond the sum of 
fifty thousand dollars in advance, which is supposed to be necessary to 
reach and slaughter the three villains. 

" I will give, myself, one thousand dollars toward this patriotic purpose. 

" Every one wishing to contribute, will address Box X, Cahawba, Ala. 
''December 1, 1864." 

You will not fiiil to remember that these very three, thus 
named, were to have been murdered on that fatal night; 
and that when Booth was captured, he was fleeing in that 
very direction. 

And, to fix upon them the brand, ineffaceably and for- 
ever, as the miscreant leaped upon the stage, his shout of 
Virginia's motto, "sic semper tyrannis," with his own ad- 
dition, " The South is avenged," proclaims to the civilized 
world, which will be filled with horror at the deed, as well 
as to posterity, which will ever loathe the crime and the 
cause for whose interests it was committed, the authorship 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 7 

of this iinparalleled atrocity. It seems, however, but a 
natural sequel to the infamous plot to murder him as he 
passed through Baltimore when first elected ; to the bruta- 
lities on our dead soldiers at Bull Run, burying them face 
downwards, and carving up their bones into trinkets; to the 
piracies on the high seas, and attempts to burn women and 
children to death in crowded hotels and theatres;' to Fort 
Pillow massacres, and the systematic and inexpiable star- 
vation of thousands of Union prisoners in their horrid pens. 
I can scarcely trust myself to attempt the portraiture of 
our martyred chief, whose death is mourned as never man's 
was mourned before; and who, in all the ages that maybe 
left to America, while time shall last, will be enshrined in 
solemn memory w^ith the Father of the Republic which he 
saved. How much I loved him personally, I cannot ex- 
press to you. Honored always by his confidence ; treated 
ever by him with affectionate regard; sitting often with 
him familiarly at his table; his last visitor on that terrible 
night; receiving his last message, full of interest to the 
toiling miners of the distant West; walking by his side 
from his parlor to his door, as he took his last steps in that 
Executive Mansion he had honored; receiving the last 
grasp of that generous and loving hand, and his last, last 
good by; declining his last kind invitation to join him in 
those hours of relaxation which incessant care and anxiety 
seemed to render so desirable, my mind has since been tor- 
tured with regrets that I had not accompanied him. If 
the knife which the assassin had intended for Grant had 
not been wasted, as it possibly would not liave been, on 
one of so much less importance in our national affairs, per- 



8 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

chance a sudden backward look at that eventful instant 
might have saved that life, so incalculably precious to wife 
and children and countrj^; or, failing in that, might have 
hindered or prevented the escape of his murderer. The 
wilHngness of any man to endanger his life for another's is 
so much doubted that I scarcely dare to say how willingly 
I would have risked my own to preserve his, of such price- 
less value to us all. But if you can realize that it is sweet 
to die for one's country, as so many scores of thousands, 
from every State and county and hamlet, have proved in 
the years that are past, you can imagine the consolation 
there would be to any one, even in his expiring hours, to 
feel that he had saved the land from the funereal gloom 
which, but a few days ago, settled down upon it from ocean 
to ocean, and from capitol to cabin, at the loss of one for 
whom even a hecatomb of victims could not atone. 

Of this noble-hearted man, so full of genial impulses, so 
self-forgetful, so utterly unselfish, so pure and gentle and 
good, who lived for us, and at last died for us, I feel how 
inadequate I am to portra}^ his manifold excellencies — his 
intellectual worth — his generous character — his fervid pa- 
triotism. Pope celebrated the memory of Robert Harley, 
the Earl of Oxford, a privy counsellor of Queen Anne, who 
himself narrowly escaped assassination, in lines that seem 
prophetic of Mr. Lincoln's virtues : — 

"A soul supreme, in eacli hard instance tried; 
Above all paiu, all anger, and all pride, 
The rage of power, the blast of public breath, 
The lust of lucre, and the dread of derath." 

No one could ever convince the President that he was 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. » 

in danger of violent death. Judging others by himself, he 
could not realize that any one could seek his blood. Or he 
may have believed, as Napoleon wrote to Jerome, that no 
public man could effectually shield himself from the dan- 
ger of assassination. Easier of access to the pu1)lic at large 
than had been any of his predecessors; admitting his bit- 
terest enemies to his reception room alone, restive under 
the cavalry escort which Secretarj^ Stanton insisted should 
accompany him last summer in his daily journeys between 
the White House and his summer residence, at the Sol- 
dier's Home, several miles from Washington, at a time, too, 
as since ascertained in the details of this loug organized 
plot, discovered since liis death, when it was intended to 
gag and handcuff him and to carrj^ him to the rebel capi- 
tol as a hostage for their recognition; sometimes escaping 
from their escort by anticipatiug their usual hour of at- 
tendance; walking about the grounds unattended ; he could 
not be persuaded that he run any risk whatever. Being 
at City Point after the evacuation of RiQhmond, he deter- 
terniiued to go thither, not trom idle curiosity, but to see 
if he could not do something to stop the effusion of blood 
and hasten the Peace for whicli he longed. The ever 
watchful Secretary of War hearing of it, implored him by 
telegraph not to go, and warned him that some lurking as- 
sassin might take his life. But, armed with his good in- 
tentions — alas, how feeljle a shield they proved against the 
deatli blow afterwards — he went, widked fearlessly and 
carelessly through the streets — met and conferred witli a 
rebel leader who remained there; and when he returned 
to City Point telegraphed to his faithful friend and consti- 



10 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

tutional adviser, who till then had feared, as we all did at 
that time, for his life : — 

"I received your dispatch last night; went to Richmond this morning, 
and have just returned. Abraham Lincoln." 

When I told him, on that last night how uneasy all had 
been at his going, he replied, pleasantly and with a smile, 
(I quote his exact words :) 

"Why, if any one else had been President, and had gone to Richmond, 
I would have been alarmed too; but I was not scared about myself a bit." 

If any of you have ever been at Washington, you will 
remember the footpath lined and embowered with trees 
leading from the back door of the War Department to the 
White House. One night, and but recently, too, when, in 
his anxiety for news from the army, he had been with the 
Secretary in the Telegraph Office of the Department, he 
was about starting home at a late hour by this short route. 
Mr. Stanton stopped ham and said, "You ought not to go 
that way; it is dangerous for you even in the daytime, but 
worse at night." Mr. Lincoln replied, "I don't believe 
there's any danger there, day or night." Mr. Stanton re- 
sponded solemnly, " Well, Mr. President, you shall not be 
killed returning the dark way from my department while 
I am in it; you must let me take you round by the avenue 
in my carriage." And Mr. Lincoln, joking the Secretary 
on his imperious military orders, and his needless alarm on 
his account, as he called it, entered his carriage, and was 
driven by the well-lighted avenue to the White House. 

And thus he walked through unseen dangers, without 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 11 

If 

"the dread of death;" his warm heart so full of good will, 
even to his enemies, that he could not imagine there was 
any one base enough to slay him; and the death-dealing 
bullet was sped to its ijiark in a theatre, where, but little 
over an hour before, he had been Avelcomed as he entered, 
by a crowded audience rising, and with cheers and waving 
of handkerchiefs, honoring him with an ovation of which 
any one might well be proud. Some regret that he was 
there at all. But, to all human appearance, he was safer 
there, by far, than in his OAvn reception room, where un- 
known visitors so often entered alone. He found there a 
temporary respite occasionally from the crowds who 
thronged his ante-rooms — relaxation from the cares and 
perplexities • which so constantly oppressed him, keeping 
his mind iftider the severest tension, like the bent bow, till 
it almost lost its spring — and, on this fatal night, to be so 
black a one hereafter in our calendar, going with re- 
luctance, and, as he expressed it to Mr. Ashman and my- 
self, only because Gen. Grant, who had been advertised 
with himself, to be present, had been compelled to leave 
the city, and he did not wish to disappoint those who would 
expect to see him there. 

To those who have expressed these regrets that the mur- 
derer found him in a theatre, let me further add, that, by 
the etiquette of Washington, the President is prohibited 
from making or returning calls, except in the case of the 
dangerous illness of some intimate friend. If he made one 
social visit, the thousands whom he could not call on, and 
especially distinguished strangers from abroad, would feel 
the discrimination. And hence, a President, not able to 



12 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

enjoy a social evening'at some friend's residence, as all of 
us can, must remain within the four walls of the White 
House, or seek relaxation from the engrossing cares which 
always confront him there from sunrise till midnight, at 
some public place of amusement. I remember, that, when 
we heard of those bloody battles of the Wilderness which 
any one less persistent than General Grant would have re- 
garded as reverses that justified retreat, Mr. Lincoln went 
to the opera, saying : — 

"People may think strange of it, but I must have some relief from this 
terrible anxiety, or it will kill me." 

Of the many thousands of persons I have met in public 
or private life, I cannot call to mind a single one who ex- 
ceeded him in calmness of temper, in kindness of disposi- 
tion, and in overflowing generosity of impulse. I doubt if 
his most intimate associate ever heard him utter bitter or 
vindictive language. He seemed wholly free from malig- 
nity or revenge; from ill will or injustice. Attacked ever 
so sharply, you all remember that he never answered rail- 
ing with railing. Criticised ever so unjustly, he would re- 
ply with no word of reproof, but patiently and uncomplain- 
ingly, if he answered at all, strive to prove that he stood 
on the rock of right. When from the halls of Congress or 
elsewhere, his most earnest opponents visited the White 
House with business, they would be met as frankly, listened 
to as intently, and treated as justly as his most earnest 
friends. It could be said of him as Pyrrhus said of Fabri- 
cius when the latter, though in hostile array, exposed to 
his enemy the treachery of his physician, who proffered to 
poison him: "It is easier to turn the sun from his career 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 13 

tliiin Fabricius from his honesty." — Men of all parties will 
remember, when the exciting contest of last fall ended in 
his triumphant re-election, his first word thereafter, from 
the portico of the White House, was that he could not, and 
would not exult over his countrymen who had differed from 
his policy. 

And thus he ruled, and thus he lived, and thus he died. 
The Avretch who stood l^ehind him and sent his bullet 
crashing through that brain, which had been devising 
plans of reconciliation with the country's deadly foes, as 
he leaped upon the stage and exulted over the death of 
him whom he denounced as a tyrant, uttered as foul a false- 
hood as the lying witnesses who caused the conviction and 
the crucifixion of the Son of Man, on the same Good Fri- 
day, nearly two thousand years ago. I would not compare 
the human with the Divine, except in that immeasurable 
contrast of the finite with the infinite. But his whole life 
proves to me that if he could have had a single moment of 
consciousness and of speech, his great heart would have 
prompted him to pray for^ those who had plotted for his 
blood, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do." 

He bore the nation's perils, and trials and sorrows, ever 
on his mind. You knew him, in a large degree, by the il- 
lustrative stories, of which his memory and his tongue were 
so prolific, using them to point a moral, or to soften discon- 
tent at his decisions; but this was the mere badinage which 
relieved him for the moment from the heavy weight of 
public duties and responsibiUties under which he often 
wearied. Those whom he admitted to his confidence, and 



14 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

with whom he conversed of his feelings, knew that his in- 
ner hfe Avas chequered with the deepest anxiety and most 
discomforting soUcitude. Elated by victories for the cause 
which was ever in his thoughts, reverses to our arms cast 
a pall of depression over him. One morning, over two 
years ago, calling upon him on business, I found him look- 
ing more than usually pale and care-worn, and inquired the 
reason. He replied, with the bad news he had received 
at a late hour the previous night, which had not yet been 
communicated to the press, adding that he had not closed 
his eyes or breakfasted; and, with an expression I shall 
never forget, he exclaimed : 

" How willingly would I exchange places, to-day, with the soldier who 
sleeps on the ground in the Army of the Potomac." 

He was as free from deceit as guile. He had one pecu- 
harity which often misled those with whom he conversed. 
When his judgment, which acted slowly, but which was 
almost immovable as the eternal hills when settled, was 
grasping some subject of importance, the arguments against 
his own desire seemed uppermost in his mind; and in con- 
versing upon it, he would present these arguments to see 
if they could be rebutted. He thus often surprised both 
friend and foe in his final decisions. Always willing to 
listen to all sides till the last possible moment; yet, when 
he put down his foot, he never took a backward step. 
Once speaking of an eminent statesman, he said : 

"When a question confronts him, he always and naturally argues it 
from the stand-point of which is the better policy; but with me," he added, 
"my only desire is to see what is right." 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 15 

And this is the key to his life. His parents left Ken- 
tucky for Indiana, in his childhood, on account of slavery 
in the former state; and he thus inherited a dislike for that 
institution. As he said recently to Gov. Branilette, of his 
native State, "If slavery be not wrong, nothing is wrong." 
Moving to Illinois, he found the prejudice there against 
anti-slavery men, when he entered on public and profes- 
* sional life, more intense than in any other free State in the 
Union. But he never dissembled, never concealed his 
opinions. Entering, in 1858, on that great contest with 
his political rival, but personal friend, Judge Douglas, which 
attracted the attention of the whole Union, he startled 
many of his friends by the declaration of his conviction 
that the Union could not permanently endure half slave 
and half free — that ultimately it would be either the one 
or the other, or be a divided house that could not stand — 
that he did not expect the Union to be dissolved, or the 
house to fall, but that it would cease to be divided — and 
that the hope of the Republic was in staying the spread of 
slavery, that the j)ublic mind might rest in the hope of its 
ultimate extinction. And though he coupled this with de- 
clarations against Congressional interference with it in 
existing States, it was not popular, and kept him in the 
whole canvass upon the defensive. But to every argument 
against it, his calm reply was, in substance, ''Such is my 
clear conviction, and I cannot unsav it." 

His frankness in expressing unpoj^ular opinions, was 
manifested, also, when in Southern Illinois, before an au- 
dience almost unanimously hostile to the sentiment, he 
declared, in the same close and doubtful contest, that, when 



16 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men 
were created free and equal, it did not mean white men 
alone, but negroes as well; and that their rights to life, 
liberty, and happiness, were as inalienable as the noblest 
of the land. He claimed no power over State laws in other 
States which conflicted with these rights, or curtailed them; 
but with unfaltering devotion to his conscientious convic- 
tion, and regardless of its effects on his political prospects, • 
he never wavered in his adherence to this truth. 

And yet, when elected President of the United States, 
he executed the Fugitive Slave Law, because his oath of 
office as the Executive, in his opinion, required it. When 
urged to strike at slavery under the war power, he replied, 
in a widely-published letter: 

"My paramount object is to save the Union, and I would save it in the 
shortest way. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I 
would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; 
and if I could do it by fieeing some and letting others alone, I would also 
do that. But T intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all 
men every where could be free." 

And, when at last the hour arrived; when, in his honest 
opinion, the alternative between the death of slavery and 
the death of the Union confronted him, then, and not till 
then, he struck at the cause of all our woes with the battle- 
axe of the Union. Signing that immortal proclamation, 
which made him the Liberator of America, on the after- 
noon of January 1st, 1863, after hours of New Years hand- 
shaking, he said to me and other friends, that night : 

"The signature looks a little tremulous, for my hand was tired, but my 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 17 

resolution was firm. I told them, in September, if they did not return to 
their allc'-iaucc, and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike at this 
pillar of their strength. And now the promise shall be keptj and not one 
word of it will I ever recall." 

And the promise was kept, and every word of it has 
stood. Thank God, when slavery and treason benmn])ed 
that hand in death, they could not destroy the noble in- 
strument to which that hand liad given a life that shall 
never die. A great writer said, that, Avhen Wilberforce 
stood at the bar of God, he held in his hands the broken 
shackles which on earth had bound hundreds of thousands 
of his fellow-men. But, when baffled treason hurried Abra- 
ham Lincoln into the presence of his Maker, he bore with 
him the manacles of four millions whom he had made 
free — fetters that no power on God's footstool is strong 
enough to place again on their enfranchised limbs. 

No man, in our era, clothed with such vast power, has 
ever used it so mercifully. No ruler, holding the keys of 
life and death, ever pardoned so many and so easily. When 
friends said to him they wished he had more of Jackson's 
sternness, he would say, "I am just as God made me, and 
cannot change." It may not be generally known that his 
doorkeepers had standing orders from him, that no matter 
how great might be the throng, if other Senators and Re- 
presentatives had to wait, or be turned away without an 
audience, he must see, before the day closed, every member 
who came to him with a petition for the saving of life. 
One night, in February, I left all other business to ask him 
to respite the son of a constituent, who was sentenced to 
be shot, at Davenport, for desertion. He heard the story 



18 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

with his usual patience, though he was wearied out with 
incessant calls, and anxious for rest, and then repHed: 

" Some of our Generals complain that I impair discipline and subordina- 
tion in the army, by my pardons and respites, but it makes me rested, 
after a day's hard work, if I can find some good excuse for saving a man's 
life, and I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name 
will make him and his family and his friends." 

And with a happy smile beaming over that care-fur- 
rowed face, he signed that name that saved that life. 

But Abraham Lincoln was not only a good and a just 
and a generous and a humane man. I could not be just to 
that well-rounded character of his without adding that he 
was also a praying man. He has often said that his re- 
liance in the gloomiest hours was on his God, to whom he 
appealed in prayer, although he never had become a pro- 
fessor of religion. To a clergyman who asked him if he 
loved his Saviour, he replied, and he was too truthful for 
us to doubt the declaration : 

"When I was first inaugurated, I did not love Him; when God took 
my son, I was greatly impressed, but still I did not love Him ; but when 
I stood upon the battle-field of Gettysburg, I gave my heart to Christ, and 
I can now say, I do love the Saviour." 

Two of my fellow-members, Messrs. Wilson of Iowa and 
Casey of Kentucky, called on him at one of these periods 
when reverses had dispirited the people. Conversing 
about the prospects of our country, one of them said: "Well, 
Mr. President, I have faith that Providence is with us; 
and if the people are but true to the cause, all will be right." 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 19 

Mr. Lincoln gravely replied, with deep solemnity in his 
tone : 

"I have a higher faith than yours. I have faith, not only that God is 
with our cause, but that he will control the hearts of the people so that 
they will be faithful to it too." 

The Bible was always in his reception room. I have 
doubted the report that he read an hour in it every day, 
for he often came direct from his bed to his reception room, 
so anxious was he to accommodate members who had im- 
portant business, and it w^ould sometimes be two or three 
hours before he w^ould playfully say to some friend whose 
turn had come, " Won't you stay here till I get some break- 
fast ?" But he must have read the Bible considerably, for 
he often quoted it. One day that I happened to come in 

he said, " Mr. has just been here attacking one of my 

Cabinet, but I stopped him with this text," and he read 
from the Proverbs a text I had never heard quoted before, 
as follows: "Accuse not a servant to his master." 

You cannot fail to have noticed the solemn and some- 
times almost mournful strain that pervades many of his ad- 
dresses. When he left Springfield in 1861 to assume the 
Presidency, his farewell words were as follows : 

" My Friends : — No one not in my position can ^ippreciate the sadness 
I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have 
lived more than a quarter of a century; here my children were born, and 
here one of them lies buried. J know not luno soon 1 shall see you ocjain. 
A duty devolves upon me, which is, perhaps, greater than that which has 
devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never 
would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which 



^0 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Di- 
vine aid which sustained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place 
my reliance for support ; and I hope that you, my friends, will all pray 
that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, 
but with which success is certain. Again I bid you all an affectionate 
farewell." 

Before that murderous blow closed his eyes in death, 
that "success" for which he had struggled was assured — 
that "duty" devolved upon him had been performed. But 
the friends to whom, with "the sadness he felt at parting," 
he bade this "affectionate farewell," can only look at the 
lifeless corpse, now slowly borne to their midst. 

When, in the same month, he raised the national flag 
over Independence Hall, at Philadelphia, he said to the 
assembled tens of thousands : 

" It was something in the Declaration of Independence giving liberty, 
not only to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all coming 
time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should 
be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal 
chance. * * * Now, my friends, can this country be saved 
upon that basis ? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest 
men in the world, if I can help to save it. But if this country cannot be 
saved without giving up that principle, 1 ivas about to say that I tvould 
rather be assassinated upon the spot than to surrender it. I have said 
nothing but what I am willing to live by, and if it be the pleasure of Al- 
mighty God, to die by." 

He seemed, as he thus spoke, to have the dark shadow 
of his violent death before him. But even in its presence 
he declared that he would rather be assassinated than to 
surrender a principle ; and that while he was willing to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 21 

live by it, yet, if it was God's pleasure, he was equally 
willing to die by it. He was assassinated, but his name 
and principles will live while history exists and the Re- 
public endures. 

So, too, in the conclusion of his first inaugural, he ap- 
pealed in the language of entreaty and peace to those who 
had raised their mailed hands against the life of their fa- 
ther-land ; 

" You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government, while 
I have the most ' solemn one ' to preserve, protect and defend it. The 
mystic cord of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot-grave 
to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, 
by the better angels of our nature." 

In all my literary reading,* I have never found a more 
beautiful and touching sentence than the one I have just 
quoted. 

In the funeral exercises in the East Room, on the 
19 th of April, the very anniversary of the day when 
the blood of murdered Massachusetts soldiers stained the 
stones of the city of Baltimore, Dr. Gurley quoted the 
President's solemn reply to a company of clergymen who 
called on him in one of the darkest hours of the war, when, 
standing where his lifeless remains then rested, he replied 
to them in tones of deep emotion : 

" Gentlemen, my hope of success in this great and terrible struggle rests 
on that immutable foundation, the justice and goodness of God. And 
when events are very threatening and prospects very dark, I still hope in 



22 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

some way, whicli man cannot see, all will be well in the end, because our 
cause is just and Grod is on our side." 

You cannot have forgotten this impressive invocation 
with which he closed his Proclamation of Emancipation. 

" And, upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted 
by the Constitution and military necessity, I invoke the considerate judg- 
ment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 

The solemn words of his last Inaugural sound in my 
ears to-day as I heard them fall from his lips only last 
month, on the steps of the Capitol. There was no exulta- 
tion over his own success, though he was the first Northern 
President who had ever been re-elected. There was no 
bitterness against the men who had filled our land with 
new-made graves, and who were striving to stab the nation 
to its death. There was no confident and enthusiastic pre- 
diction of the country's triumph. But with almost the 
solemn utterances of one of the Hebrew Prophets ; as if he 
felt he was standing, as he Avas, on the verge of his open 
grave, and addressing his last official words to his country- 
men, with his lips touched by the finger of Inspiration, he 
said : 

" The Almighty has his own purposes. ' Wo unto the world because 
of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but wo to that man 
by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery 
is one of those offences, which in the providence of God must needs come, 
but which having continued through His appointed time, he now wills to 
remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as 
the wo due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein 
any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 23 

God always attribute to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, 
that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills 
that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
and fifty years of unrequited toil sliall be sunk, and until every drop of 
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drav.ii with the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judg- 
ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' 

''With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the 
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work 
we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all 
nations." 

What a portraiture of his own character he unconsciously 
draws in this closing paragraph : 

"With malice toward uone, with charity for all, with firmness in the 
right, as God gives us to see the right." 

And yet iliey slew liim. 

As this extraordinary State paper crossed the Atlantic 
to the Old World, it elicited the most profound interest. 
Mr. Gladstone, himself the most eloquent of English States- 
men, spoke in the most elevated eulogy of it, saying that 
it showed a moral elevation which commanded the highest 
respect, adding, in emphatic language : 

"I am taken captive by so striking an utterance as this;' for I see in it 
the effect of sharp trial, when rightly borne, to raise men to a higher level 
of thought and feeling than they could otherwise reach." 

And the British Standard declared it — 



24 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

"The most remarkable thing of the sort ever pronounced by any Presi- 
dent of the United States from its first day until now. Its Alpha and 
Omega is Almighty God, the God of Justice and the Father of Mercies, 
who is working out the purposes of his love. It is invested with a dignity 
and pathos which lift it high above every thing of the kind, whether in the 
Old World or the New." 

Bear with me further, while I quote one letter, when, in 
the midst of the exciting canvass of last fall, in which he 
was so deeply interested, during the very week he was 
being denounced in Chicago as scarcely any man had ever 
been denounced before, he shut out the thoughts of these 
cruelly-unjust aspersions, to write in this deeply-impressive 
strain to a Philadelphia lady, then resident in England : 



"Executive 
Washington, 



E Mansion, ] 
Sept. 6, 1864. j 

"Eliza B. Gurney — My Esteemed Friend : — I have never forgotten, 
probably never shall forget, the very impressive occasion, when yourself 
and friends visited me on a Sabbath forenoon, two years ago, nor has your 
kind letter, written nearly a year later, evor been forgotten. 

"In all it has been your purpose to strengthen my reliance on God. I 
am much indebted to the good. Christian people of the country for their 
constant prayers and consolations, and to no one of them more than your- 
self. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though 
we erring mortals may fail to perceive them in advance. 

"We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before 
this, but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall acknowledge 
His wisdom and our own errors therein. Mean while we must work earn- 
estly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces 
to the great end He ordains. Surely he intends some great good to follow 
this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could stay. Your people — the 
Friends — have had, and are having very great trial on principles and faith." 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 25 

I stop here, in the reading of this letter, to draw your 
attention to the next sentence, which illustrates Mr. Lin- 
coln's power in stating facts. He seemed to have the 
ability of taking a great truth, a living principle, or a 
striking argument, out of all the mists that might be ga- 
thered around it, and placing it before you so vividly in a 
single sentence, that the presentation of it by others would 
contrast with his, as a picture, flat before your eyes, com- 
pares with the figures in the same picture brought out so 
palpably and life-like under the binocular mj^stery of the 
stereoscope. Witness the striking condensation and unan- 
swerable argument of this next sentence : 

'■'Opposed to both war and oppression, tliey can onJy pra(tlr(dly oppose 
oppression by war. In this hard dilemma some have chosen one horn, and 
some the other. For those appealing to me on conscientious grounds, 1 
have done, and shall do the best I can in my own conscience, and my oath 
to the law. That you believe this I doubt not, and believing it, I shall 
still receive, for our country and myself, your earnest prayers to our Father 
in Heaven. "Your sincere friend, "A. Lincoln." 

Nor should I forget to mention here, that the last act of 
Congress ever signed by him, was one requiring that the 
motto, in Avhich he sincerely believed, "In God we trust," 
should hereafter be inscribed upon all our national coin. 

But April came at last, with all its glorious resurrection 
of spring — that spring which he was not to see ripening 
into summer. The last sands in the hour-glass of his life 
were falling. His last moment drew nigh, for his banded 
assassins, foiled in an attempt to poison him last year, (a 
plot only discovered since detectives have been tracking 



26 LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

the mysteries of his death,) had resolved, this time, on 
striking a surer blow. Victory after victory crowned our 
national armies. A hundred captured rebel banners filled 
the War Department. Scores of thousands of rebel sol- 
diers had surrendered; and all over the republic, the joy- 
ous acclaim of millions hailed the promised land of Peace. 
But our beloved leader was to enter another land of rest. 
Thank Heaven, though wicked men may kill the body, 
they cannot kill the immortal soul. And if the spirits of 
the good men who have left us, are permitted to look back 
on the land they loved in life, it is not presumptuous to 
believe that Washington and Lincoln, from the shining 
courts above, look down to-day with paternal interest on 
the nation which, under Providence, the one had founded 
and the other saved, and which will intwine their names 
together in hallowed recollection for ever. 

But, in his last hours, all those affectionate traits of 
character which I have so inadequately delineated, shone 
out in more than wonted brilliancy. How his kindly heart 
must have throbbed with joy, as, on the very day before 
his death, he gladdened so many tens of thousands of 
anxious minds by ordering the abandonment of the im- 
pending, but now not-needed draft! With what generous 
magnanimity he authorized our heroic Lieutenant-General 
to proffer terms unparalleled in their liberality, to the Army 
of Virginia, so long the bulwark of the rebellion. And the 
last official act of his life was, when learning by telegraph, 
that very Friday afternoon, that two of the leaders and 
concoctors of the rebellion were expected to arrive dis- 
guised, in a few hours, at one of our ports, to escape to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 27 

Europe, he instructed our officers not to arrest them, but 
let them flee the country. He did not wish their blood, 
but their associates thirsted for his, and in a few short 
hours after this message of mercy to save their friends 
from death sped on the wings of Ughtning, with wicked 
hands they slew him. No last words of affection to weep- 
ing wife and children did they allow him. No moment's 
space for prayer to God. But, in order that consciousness 
might end with the instant, the pistol was held close to the 
skull, that the bullet might be buried in his brain. 

Thus hved and thus died our murdered President. But 
as the ruffian shot down the pilate at our helm, just as the 
Ship of State, after all its stormy seas, was sailing prosper- 
ously into port, another, whose life, like that of Seward 
and Stanton, had been marked for that very night of hor- 
rors, but who had been saved, sprang to the rudder, and 
the noble ship holds on her course without a flutter in her 
canvass or a strain upon her keel. Andrew Johnson, to 
whom the public confidence was so quickly and worthily 
transferred, is cast in a sterner mould than he whose 
place be fills. He has warred on traitors in his mountain 
home as they have warred on him ; and he insists, with this 
crowning infamy filling up their cup of wickedness, that 
treason should be made odious, and that mercy to the 
leaders who engendered it is cruelty to the nation. 

The text of Holy Writ which he believes in for them is 
in the 26th verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra, "Let judg- 
ment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto 
death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to 



2$ LIFE AND PRINCIPLES OF 

imprisonment;" and to this do not all loyal hearts respond 

AMEN? 

And thus, though the President is slain, the nation lives. 
The statesman, who has so successfully conducted our 
foreign correspondence, as to save us from threatened and 
endangering complications and difficulties abroad, and who, 
with the President, leaned ever to mercy's side, so brutally 
bowie-knifed as he lay helpless on his bed of anguish, is 
happily to be spared us; and the conspiracy which intended 
a bloody harvest of six patriots' lives, reaped, with its mur- 
derous sickle, but one. 

But that one — how dear to all our hearts — how priceless 
in its worth, how transparent and spotless its purity of 
character ! In the fiery trial to which the nation has been 
subjected, we have given of the bravest and the best of the 
land. The South is billowed with the graves where sleep 
the patriot martyrs of constitutional liberty till the resur- 
rection morn. The vacant chair at the table of thousands 
upon thousands tells of those, who, inspired by the subli- 
mest spirit of self-sacrifice, have died that the Republic 
might survive. Golden and living treasures have been 
heaped up upon our country's altar. But, after all these 
costly sacrifices had been ofiered, and the end seemed al- 
most at hand, a costUer sacrifice had to be made ; and from 
the highest place in all the land the victim came. Slaugh- 
tered at the moment of victory, the blow was too late to 
rob him of the grand place he has won for himself in his- 
tory: 

"We know him noiv. All narrow jealousies 
Are silent. And we see him as he moved, 
How modest, kindly, all compassionate, wise, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 29 

"With what sublime repression of himself, 
And in what limita and how tenderly. 
Whose glory was redressing human wrongs, 
Not making his high place the lawless perch 
Of winged ambition, nor a vantage ground! 
Of pleasure. But, through all this tract of years, 
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life." 

Murdered, coffined, buried, he will live with those few 
immortal names who were not born to die ; live, as the Fa- 
ther of the Faithful in the times that tried men's souls; 
live in the grateful hearts of the dark-browed race he lifted 
from under the heel of the oppressor to the dignity of free- 
dom and of manhood; live in every bereaved circle which 
has given father, husband, son or friend to die, as he did, 
for his country ; live, with the glorious company of mart^TS 
to liberty, justice and humanity, that trio of Heaven-born 
principles; live, m the love of all beneath the circuit of the 
sun, who loathe tyranny, slavery and wrong. And, leaving 
behind him a record that shows how honesty and principle 
lifted him, self-made as he was, from the humblest ranks 
of the people to the noblest station on the globe, and a 
name that shall brighten under the eye of posterity as the 
ages roll by, 

"From the top of fame's ladder he stepped to the sky." 



b '12 



